ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag

News

Munich — Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and start-ups, is laun­ching CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, a unique combi­na­tion of forces in the field of Circu­lar Economy. True sustaina­bi­lity and thus climate neutra­lity can only be achie­ved if we succeed in massi­vely redu­cing resource consump­tion and rethin­king estab­lis­hed proces­ses. This enor­mous chal­lenge offers both compa­nies and start-ups immense busi­ness poten­tial and a wide range of oppor­tu­nities for inno­va­tive busi­ness models. They can be crucial in making Europe more resi­li­ent by making it less depen­dent on global supply chains in the long term.

Climate and energy crisis, popu­la­tion growth, species extinc­tion, fragile supply chains and incre­a­sing resource scar­city: Circu­lar Economy is a key to solving exis­ten­tial crises. In line with the vision of a sustainable and people-cente­red future for Germany and Europe, Unter­neh­mer­TUM aims to create a central plat­form for the bund­ling and active shaping of such ideas in Munich. Circu­lar economy is unders­tood as a rege­ne­ra­tive econo­mic system in which resour­ces are kept in cycles and whose goal is to deco­u­ple value crea­tion from resource consump­tion.

Circu­la­rity works best in the ecosys­tem

CIRCULAR REPUBLIC supports compa­nies and start-ups in further deve­lo­ping their inno­va­tions and ideas for the Circu­lar Economy in line with market requi­re­ments and trans­forming them into concrete busi­ness models. In addi­tion, the initia­tive networks compa­nies and start-ups with rele­vant play­ers from science, busi­ness and the venture capi­tal indus­try. In this context, the inno­va­tion ecosys­tem of Unter­neh­mer­TUM plays a crucial role: The initia­tive speci­fi­cally offers access to the latest rese­arch findings from the field of Circu­lar Economy at Tech­ni­sche Univer­si­tät München and itself provi­des advice on entre­pre­neu­rial issues and chal­len­ges. A central service also consists of directly networ­king compa­nies and start-ups in so-called “multi-stake­hol­der projects” and acting as a joint plat­form for the exchange of know­ledge and expe­ri­ence. Ideally, the projects deve­lo­ped will then find their way into concrete application.

The initia­tive was laun­ched with foun­ding part­ner BMW AG. The first part­ner compa­nies include SAP, PreZero and Tengel­mann.

Inter­di­sci­pli­nary foun­ding trio

To be able to fully address the field of Circu­lar Economy, you need diverse perspec­ti­ves and a team with very diffe­rent back­grounds. The foun­ding team of the initia­tive inclu­des Dr. Susanne Kadner, Dr. Matthias Ball­weg and Niclas Mauß (Photo © CIRCULAR REPUBLIC). Kadner previously initia­ted and led the Circu­lar Economy Initia­tive Germany. Before joining CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, Ball­weg was respon­si­ble for SYSTEMIQ’s global Circu­lar Economy acti­vi­ties and Mauß initia­ted and estab­lis­hed Germany’s largest Circu­lar Economy rese­arch network at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich.

Multi-stake­hol­der approach

The first “multi-stake­hol­der project” will focus on the textile indus­try — one of the least circu­lar sectors of all. Start-ups already offer nume­rous partial solu­ti­ons here — such as recy­cling tech­no­lo­gies — but there is a lack of a cross-indus­try solu­tion that is now being jointly deve­lo­ped. Anot­her project will subse­quently revolve around the recy­cling of batte­ries. The findings deve­lo­ped in the initia­tive — for example, on the start-up land­s­cape in the Circu­lar Economy sector — will also be shared with the public. A specially initia­ted festi­val will take place in Munich from Novem­ber 15–18, 2023, and aims to bring toge­ther outstan­ding play­ers in the circu­lar economy.

Dr. Matthias Ball­weg, Co-Foun­der and Direc­tor of CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, says: “The global deve­lo­p­ments around climate, lack of resour­ces or supply shor­ta­ges, as well as the accom­pany­ing regu­la­tory conse­quen­ces show: In the 30s of this century, there will no longer be a success­ful busi­ness model based on the explo­ita­tion of primary raw mate­ri­als. The Circu­lar Economy will be the key to solving the climate crisis and at the same time the driving force for inno­va­tion and prospe­rity in Europe. The large number of star­tups working on the topic of the Circu­lar Economy — we have iden­ti­fied almost 400 of them in Germany alone — is anot­her indi­ca­tor that this is where the future lies.“
https://www.unternehmertum.de//circular-republic


CIRCULAR REPUBLIC

The Circu­lar Economy is the basis for a prospe­rous, resi­li­ent and sustainable economy. As part of Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and startup, CIRCULAR REPUBLIC empowers compa­nies and star­tups to realize circu­lar economy inno­va­tions and deve­lop new busi­ness models. As a plat­form, the initia­tive networks rele­vant actors and thus aims to set system-chan­ging impul­ses along the entire value chain.

News

Berlin — Capi­ton has announ­ced the closing of its EUR 248 million “capi­ton Quan­tum” conti­nua­tion fund. In addi­tion to exis­ting and new capi­ton inves­tors, high-profile blue-chip secon­dary inves­tors led by Eura­zeo and Uniges­tion have also inves­ted in capi­ton Quan­tum. capi­ton Quan­tum has reinves­ted in Raith and AEMtec, two leading indus­trial tech­no­logy compa­nies origi­nally acqui­red by capi­ton Fund V in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

The Conti­nua­tion Fund capi­ton Quan­tum was estab­lis­hed to invest in the compa­nies AEMtec GmbH(“AEMtec”) and Raith GmbH (“Raith”). This will provide the compa­nies with addi­tio­nal capi­tal and time to conti­nue the very success­ful growth stra­te­gies that have been imple­men­ted in both compa­nies since capiton’s entry via the capi­ton V fund. AEMtec is one of the leading specia­lists in the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of complex opto- and microelec­tro­nic modu­les through to complete systems. Raith is a leading provi­der of precision tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons for nano-fabri­ca­tion, elec­tron beam litho­gra­phy, focu­sed ion beam manu­fac­tu­ring, nano-engi­nee­ring and reverse engi­nee­ring applications.

The conti­nua­tion fund will provide addi­tio­nal capi­tal to Raith and AEMtec to acce­le­rate their orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth and allow the capi­ton team to conti­nue inves­ting in both compa­nies to support their next phase of growth. Both compa­nies were origi­nally acqui­red by the capi­ton V fund. Raith, a leading equip­ment manu­fac­tu­rer in the nano­tech­no­logy sector, has already been part of the capi­ton port­fo­lio since 2016, and capi­ton inves­ted in AEMtec, a full-service provi­der of state-of-the-art microelec­tro­nic and optoelec­tro­nic systems, in 2019.

We are very plea­sed to have attrac­ted a high cali­ber group of blue chip secon­dary inves­tors led by Eura­zeo and Uniges­tion along­side exis­ting and new capi­ton LPs. This under­li­nes the strong convic­tion in favor of robust German SMEs even in times of consi­derable market volatility.

Under capiton’s owners­hip, Raith and AEMtec have focu­sed on capa­city expan­sion, inter­na­tio­na­liz­a­tion and impro­ving their tech­no­logy offe­ring. Toge­ther with the two manage­ment teams, we will conti­nue to execute on a combi­na­tion of orga­nic initia­ti­ves and trans­for­ma­tive bolt-on acqui­si­ti­ons. Both manage­ment teams will remain heavily invested.

Chris­toph Karbenk, Mana­ging Part­ner at capi­ton, comments: “On behalf of the entire capi­ton team, I would like to thank the group of inves­tors who suppor­ted us in this tran­sac­tion as well as the manage­ment teams who have done an excel­lent job to date. We are very exci­ted to conti­nue this success­ful part­ners­hip and take both compa­nies to the next level. The tran­sac­tion gene­ra­tes strong returns for our exis­ting capi­ton V LPs, who have been given the full option to either gene­rate liqui­dity or parti­ci­pate in the next chap­ter of both companies.”

Dr. Ralf Jede, CEO of Raith, said: “We are very proud to have deve­lo­ped Raith into the world market leader for nano­fa­b­ri­ca­tion equip­ment. Many thanks to the great commit­ment of all Raith employees and the trust­ful part­ners­hip with capi­ton. We very much look forward to working with capi­ton Quan­tum to realize further highly attrac­tive growth opportunities.”

Jan Trom­mers­hau­sen, CEO of AEMtec, said, “We look forward to the next chap­ter of our part­ners­hip with capi­ton, with all AEMtec employees remai­ning stron­gly commit­ted to the company. We are exci­ted to be able to leverage inter­na­tio­nal buy-and-build oppor­tu­nities to further streng­t­hen our posi­tion as a leading full-service provi­der of advan­ced micro- and optoelec­tro­nic systems.”

Consul­tant Capiton:

UBS Private Funds Group, a fully inte­gra­ted part of UBS Invest­ment Bank, as exclu­sive secon­dary advisor

Legal advice: Stephen­son Harwood, POELLATH, BMH Bräu­ti­gam and Ashurst

EY (tax and struc­tu­ring advice), Houli­han Lokey (debt advice), Deloitte (legal and finan­cial due dili­gence), Roland Berger (commer­cial due dili­gence) and Kroll (fair­ness opinion).

The main inves­tors were advi­sed by Hogan Lovells. The tran­sac­tion was nota­ri­zed by CMS Hasche Sigle.

BMH BRÄUTIGAM advi­sed finan­cial inves­tor capi­ton in the context of the newly laun­ched 248 million Euro fund “capi­ton Quan­tum” on the acqui­si­tion of the stakes in the leading German high-tech compa­nies Raith and AEMtec.

 

News

Landshut/Munich — Bayern Kapi­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active inves­tors in the German high-tech finan­cing land­s­cape, is inves­ting in tado°. The Munich-based scale-up is the Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment and deve­lops energy-effi­ci­ent ther­mo­stats to opti­mize energy consump­tion in resi­den­tial buil­dings. The inves­ted funds come from the Scal­eUp-Fonds Bayern, the largest of the invest­ment funds mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal. Other inves­tors in the finan­cing round with a total volume of EUR 43 million include Kiko Ventures, Swis­scanto and Trill Impact Ventures as lead inves­tor; previous inves­tors, inclu­ding Noven­tic and Target Part­ners, among others, also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

With energy prices rising across Europe, house­holds are incre­a­singly looking for ways to reduce high energy costs. An effec­tive method for cost reduc­tion and energy saving is promi­sed by the effi­ci­ent services and products of tado GmbH. Since its foun­ding in 2011, the Munich-based company has been deve­lo­ping consu­mer-friendly and energy-effi­ci­ent ther­mo­stats that are compa­ti­ble with over 95% of all house­holds in Europe across manu­fac­tu­rers and can be instal­led by consu­mers them­sel­ves. The energy-saving features reduce custo­mers’ heating costs by an average of 22%. By combi­ning smart ther­mo­stats with time-varia­ble energy rates, a home’s energy use can be shifted to times when energy prices are low. To acce­le­rate its market entry in this area, tado° recently acqui­red aWATTar, a pioneer in energy load shif­ting and time-varia­ble energy offers. Toge­ther, the two compa­nies are now plan­ning to signi­fi­cantly expand their bund­led offe­ring to reduce costs and CO2 emis­si­ons for customers.

tado° sold around three million smart ther­mo­stats by the end of 2022 and doubled its busi­ness with smart ther­mo­stats and service offe­rings in 2022. The step into profi­ta­bi­lity is now to follow in 2023. In order to reach even more house­holds, tado° is plan­ning to work more closely with housing asso­cia­ti­ons that manage a large number of apart­ments for this purpose. A new, adap­ted product line is to be laun­ched for this market segment this year.

Chris­tian Deil­mann, Co-Foun­der and Chief Product Offi­cer at tado°, comments, “As the market leader in smart indoor climate manage­ment, now is the right time to bring our unique energy manage­ment offe­rings to the mass market. We look forward to strong part­ners­hips with the new investors.”

“With tado°, we have inves­ted in a company that makes the problem of high energy consump­tion in resi­den­tial buil­dings, espe­cially through heating and cooling, more effi­ci­ent and addres­ses it with a sustainable and cost-saving approach,” explains Monika Steger (photo © Bayern Kapi­tal), Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “The strong reve­nue growth of the past years proves that with the closed finan­cing round, tado° has the tools to become one of the world’s leading play­ers for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment. We look forward to suppor­ting the company in its further expan­sion plans.”

Bavaria’s Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs Hubert Aiwan­ger says: “Espe­cially in times of crisis, we need inno­va­tive ideas. tado° has its finger on the pulse with its energy-effi­ci­ent ther­mo­stats. We there­fore support such ambi­tious high-tech compa­nies with our Scal­eUp Fund Bava­ria. We thus help you as a co-invest­ment part­ner to realize large finan­cing rounds in parti­cu­larly capi­tal-inten­sive expan­sion phases.”

The Scal­eUp Fund Bava­ria was initia­ted by the Bava­rian state government in July 2021 and has since been mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern. A prere­qui­site for parti­ci­pa­tion by the Scal­eUp Fund Bava­ria is a demons­tra­bly success­ful, scala­ble busi­ness model based on an inno­va­tive tech­no­logy, ideally secu­red by property rights, with sustainable unique selling points and clear compe­ti­tive advan­ta­ges. Like all funds mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal, Scal­eUp-Fonds Bayern never invests in compe­ti­tion, but exclu­si­vely in close coope­ra­tion and always on equal terms with private investors.

About tado°

tado° is the Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment. As the only cross-manu­fac­tu­rer plat­form, tado°’s Smart Ther­mo­stats and Services are compa­ti­ble with any type of heating or cooling system. Custo­mers bene­fit from energy-saving tech­no­lo­gies such as geofen­cing and window-open detec­tion and varia­ble-time rates. tado° was foun­ded in 2011 and has its company head­quar­ters in Munich. With 180 employees, tado° is revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the way energy is used at home, for more comfort, effi­ci­ency and in harmony with nature. www.tado.de

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).

Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state government, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 companies.

Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in early on include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plastics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scomp­ler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Theva, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion and many more.
www.bayernkapital.de

News

Berlin — Venture capi­tal inves­tors Burda­Princi­pal Invest­ments, Sequoia Capi­tal India and Vorwerk Ventures are merging their port­fo­lio company and co-living opera­tor Habyt with its US coun­ter­part Common. Habyt, as the largest co-living company in Europe and Asia, will join US market leader Common to form the largest global co-living operator.

Foun­ded in Berlin in 2017 and led by CEO Luca Bovone, Habyt Group is backed by major inves­tors from around the world, inclu­ding P101, Vorwerk Ventures, DI Capi­tal Solu­ti­ons, Burda­Princi­pal Invest­ments, Sequoia Capi­tal India and Mitsu­bi­shi. Common is based in the U.S. and provi­des stream­li­ned manage­ment of multi­fa­mily proper­ties through tech­no­lo­gi­cal, design and opera­tio­nal inno­va­tions. With more than $110 million in venture capi­tal invest­ments, Common provi­des excep­tio­nal expe­ri­en­ces for renters in more than 10 metro­po­li­tan areas across the United States.

The merged company now opera­tes in more than 40 cities and 14 coun­tries on three conti­nents, mana­ging more than 30,000 units ranging from co-living to studios to tradi­tio­nal rental housing. Both Habyt and Common tripled their busi­ness in 2022 and expect further growth in 2023. The new merged company is expec­ted to be profi­ta­ble as early as 2023.

About Burda­Princi­pal Investments

BPI is a unit of Hubert Burda Media that provi­des long-term growth capi­tal for fast-growing digi­tal tech­no­logy and media compa­nies. Hubert Burda Media is one of the largest Euro­pean media and tech­no­logy groups, which has been success­fully inves­ting in Inter­net-based compa­nies since 1998.

About Sequoia India and Southe­ast Asia

Sequoia helps bold foun­ders build excep­tio­nal compa­nies, from idea to IPO and beyond. Sequoia India and Southe­ast Asia actively works with foun­ders from a wide range of compa­nies across all indus­tries, inclu­ding BYJUs, Carou­sell, Druva, GoTo, OYO Rooms, Toko­pe­dia, True­cal­ler, Zomato and nume­rous others. By part­ne­ring with Sequoia, star­tups bene­fit from over 50 years of expe­ri­ence and lessons lear­ned from early colla­bo­ra­ti­ons with compa­nies like Airbnb, Alib­aba, Apple, Drop­box, Google, LinkedIn and Stripe. From the begin­ning, univer­si­ties, foun­da­ti­ons and other non-profit orga­niz­a­ti­ons have formed the foun­da­tion of Sequoia’s inves­tor base. www.sequoiacap.com/india/ and www.sequoiacap.com/sea/.

About Vorwerk Ventures

Vorwerk Ventures is an inde­pen­dent venture capi­tal fund that emer­ged from the Vorwerk Group at the end of 2019 and is charac­te­ri­zed by a strong commit­ment to consu­mer-facing and digi­tal compa­nies. Head­quar­te­red in Berlin, Vorwerk Ventures curr­ently mana­ges assets of nearly €500 million and is constantly on the lookout for promi­sing projects. Star­ting with seed and Series A invest­ments of € 1 million up to € 10 million, Vorwerk Ventures offers ongo­ing support and provi­des up to € 15 million for subse­quent finan­cing rounds.

Advi­sors Burda­Princi­pal Invest­ments, Sequoia Capi­tal India and Vorwerk Ventures: YPOG
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Tobias Lovett (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate
Dr. Tim Schlös­ser (M&A), Partner
Barbara Hasse (M&A), Associate

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, YPOG employs more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Frank­furt a. M. — The sale of Onven­tis to Keen­sight by Main Capi­tal Part­ners is anot­her very success­ful exit for Main and under­li­nes the track record of top quar­tile returns. Main Capi­tal inves­ted in Onven­tis in 2019, helping the company become a leading source-to-pay (S2P) provi­der for mid-market compa­nies. Keen­sight, a reco­gni­zed tech­no­logy-focu­sed inves­tor specia­li­zing in pan-Euro­pean growth buyouts, will support Onven­tis in its next phase of growth.

Foun­ded in 2000 and head­quar­te­red in Stutt­gart, Germany, the company’s offe­ring mana­ges the source-to-pay proces­ses of direct and indi­rect mate­ri­als in stra­te­gic and opera­tio­nal purcha­sing. Keen­sight, who have been inte­res­ted in the spend manage­ment soft­ware space for years, iden­ti­fied Onven­tis as a market leader early on and reco­gni­zed that Onven­tis stood out for its strong product offe­ring, clear stra­te­gic vision and seam­less execu­tion. Keen­sight will support Onven­tis on its jour­ney to beco­m­ing an inter­na­tio­nal SaaS cham­pion in the midmar­ket. Throughout the part­ners­hip, the entire Onven­tis manage­ment team will remain on board and co-invest with Keen­sight Capital.

During the Main invest­ment period, the company evol­ved from a company focu­sed on the DACH region to a leading pan-Euro­pean provi­der of spend manage­ment soft­ware with local offices in the Nether­lands, Sweden and Austria. During this period, the company became an attrac­tive Rule-of-40 company with a strong focus on recur­ring reve­nue growth and an incre­ase in total reve­nue of more than 2.0x. In addi­tion, Main Capi­tal suppor­ted Onven­tis with two stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons in the areas of spend analy­tics and invoice manage­ment to expand the group’s product offe­ring and streng­t­hen its inter­na­tio­nal presence. These achie­ve­ments were also recently reco­gni­zed by Spend Matters, which ranked Onven­tis as one of the top ‘Provi­ders to Watch’.

Frank Schmidt, CEO of Onven­tis, commen­ted, “Onven­tis has a promi­sing future ahead of it and we look forward to star­ting this new chap­ter with Keen­sight as our new part­ner. We believe their exper­tise will drive our growth and look forward to working toge­ther. We would like to expressly thank Main Capi­tal Part­ners for the good coope­ra­tion and their support in the rapid imple­men­ta­tion of our jointly defi­ned growth strategy.”

Yuri Mikha­lev, Part­ner at Keen­sight Capi­tal, added: “We are proud to welcome Onven­tis to our port­fo­lio and look forward to working with the team to streng­t­hen the group’s growth and expand the company’s offe­ring and geogra­phic reach. We iden­ti­fied this company as a leading cloud procu­re­ment provi­der, and Onven­tis’ already outstan­ding market posi­tio­ning, strong brand and attrac­tive profile convin­ced us of the company’s high caliber.”

Sven van Berge Hene­gou­wen (Photo © Main Capi­tal Part­ners), Mana­ging Part­ner at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, conclu­ded, “We congra­tu­late Onven­tis on ente­ring the next phase of growth with Keen­sight. The company has shown great promise over the past few years and we are proud to have suppor­ted Onven­tis with two very stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons that signi­fi­cantly incre­ase custo­mer value. We wish the company, manage­ment and employees all the best for the future.”

About Onven­tis

Onven­tis has been a cloud pioneer for the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of procu­re­ment and finance proces­ses since 2000. Onven­tis Buyer cloud soft­ware is an all-in-one procu­re­ment system that helps compa­nies with all procu­re­ment opera­ti­ons to achieve finan­cial control, process effi­ci­ency, and cost savings while comply­ing with corpo­rate poli­cies and laws. Onven­tis Buyer stream­li­nes and auto­ma­tes all proces­ses from procu­re­ment source to payment, inclu­ding colla­bo­ra­tion with suppliers in the network. The Onven­tis network connects busi­ness proces­ses of buyers and suppliers — simply and secu­rely. World­wide, more than 1,000 compa­nies with appro­xi­mately 450,000 users in the Onven­tis network handle an annual procu­re­ment volume of over 10 billion euros with more than 50,000 suppliers.

About Keen­sight Capital

Keen­sight Capi­tal (“Keen­sight”), one of Europe’s leading growth buyout firms, is dedi­ca­ted to helping entre­pre­neurs execute their growth stra­te­gies. For over 20 years, the Keen­sight Capi­tal team has used its know­ledge of invest­ment and growth indus­tries to make long-term invest­ments in profi­ta­ble compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and reve­nues of between €10 million and €400 million. Drawing on its exper­tise in tech­no­logy and health­care, Keen­sight iden­ti­fies the best invest­ment oppor­tu­nities in Europe and works closely with manage­ment teams to deve­lop and execute their stra­te­gic vision. Keen­sight Capital’s success has earned it a Gold Award from the Private Equity Exchange & Awards for the last six conse­cu­tive years, for the best Euro­pean Growth Private Equity Fund.

About Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in the Bene­lux, DACH region and the Nordic coun­tries. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence streng­t­he­ning soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to realize sustainable growth and build excel­lent soft­ware groups. Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and the USA (Boston). As of Octo­ber 2021, Main has over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment. Main has inves­ted in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies to date. These compa­nies have crea­ted jobs for about 9000 employees.

News

London/ Munich — Offi­cium GmbH (“Offi­cium”), a port­fo­lio company of Arcus Euro­pean Infra­st­ruc­ture Fund 3 SCSp (“AEIF3”), a fund mana­ged by Arcus Infra­st­ruc­ture Part­ners LLP (“Arcus”), conti­nues its growth path and has success­fully comple­ted the acqui­si­tion of Alpha­mess GmbH in Bochum, North Rhine-West­pha­lia (“Alpha­mess”). Offi­cium is one of Germany’s leading inde­pen­dent mete­ring service provi­ders in the field of heating and opera­ting cost billing and equip­ment rental for the housing indus­try. Alpha­mess is Officium’s tenth acqui­si­tion in the last two years. It under­li­nes the success of the conso­li­da­tion stra­tegy of leading inde­pen­dent suppliers. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

With the now comple­ted acqui­si­tion of Alpha­mess, Offi­cium is expan­ding its presence in North Rhine-West­pha­lia. The members of the exis­ting manage­ment team will support the next phase of Alpha­mess’ busi­ness development.

Volker Wylach, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Alpha­mess GmbH, comments: “We are plea­sed to take the next stra­te­gic step with the strong plat­form Offi­cium. Officium’s compre­hen­sive know-how will allow us to deve­lop in a targe­ted manner and improve our effi­ci­ency even further. This will bene­fit both our custo­mers and our employees.”

Stefano Brug­nolo, Part­ner at Arcus Infra­st­ruc­ture Part­ners, explains: “The German market for mete­ring services is highly fremen­ted and has been on a conso­li­da­tion course for years. Offi­cium, as one of the leading inde­pen­dent provi­ders in this attrac­tive segment, is an ideal plat­form for small to medium-sized compa­nies that want to grow without giving up their iden­tity. We support Offi­cium in pushing its buy-and-build stra­tegy even further in the future.”

Stephan Kier­meyer, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Offi­cium GmbH, adds: “With Alpha­mess, we now have anot­her strong part­ner that opti­mally comple­ments our service port­fo­lio. With the tenth acqui­si­tion, we are once again streng­t­he­ning our market posi­tion and incre­a­sing our presence in North Rhine-Westphalia.”

Advi­sors Offi­cium: Noerr (Legal) and Alva­rez & Marsal (Finan­cial)

About Offi­cium

Offi­cium GmbH is one of the leading inde­pen­dent measu­re­ment service provi­ders in the field of heating and opera­ting cost billing and equip­ment rental for the housing indus­try. The company has been estab­lis­hed as a plat­form invest­ment in 2020. As an umbrella company, Offi­cium mana­ges nume­rous regio­nal provi­ders and has a presence prima­rily in Berlin, Bran­den­burg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-West­pha­lia (for example, Düssel­dorf and Duis­burg), Meck­len­burg-Western Pome­ra­nia, Saxony-Anhalt (Dessau-Roßlau), Saxony (Dres­den and Chem­nitz), Thurin­gia, and Bava­ria (Upper and Lower Fran­co­nia). Custo­mers are prima­rily small and medium-sized property manage­ment compa­nies and private landlords. More than one million measu­ring units are now supplied. — www.officium.gmbh

About Arcus Infra­st­ruc­ture Partners 

Arcus Infra­st­ruc­ture Part­ners LLP is an inde­pen­dent fund mana­ger focu­sed exclu­si­vely on long-term invest­ments in Euro­pean infra­st­ruc­ture. Arcus invests on behalf of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors through discre­tio­nary funds and dedi­ca­ted co-invest­ment vehi­cles and, through its subsi­dia­ries, curr­ently mana­ges invest­ments with a total enter­prise value of over EUR 19 billion (as of Septem­ber 30, 2022). Arcus targets mid-sized, value-add infra­st­ruc­ture invest­ments, focu­sing on compa­nies in the digi­tal tech­no­logy, trans­por­ta­tion, logistics and indus­trial, and energy sectors. — www.arcusip.com

News

Grün­wald /Eningen unter Achalm — G&N Holding GmbH (“G&N” or “G&N Group”), a port­fo­lio company of AURELIUS Wachs­tums­ka­pi­tal, has acqui­red Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik GmbH & Co KG (“Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik”). The company offers high-quality services in the field of tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment for fire alarm systems, secu­rity tech­no­logy as well as IT and telecom­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons technology.

A signi­fi­cant share of sales is gene­ra­ted with main­ten­ance and service. In addi­tion, Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik has its own 24/7 service and emer­gency call center. The company’s head­quar­ters are loca­ted in Enin­gen unter Achalm. A further four bran­ches are loca­ted on Lake Constance, in Ulm, in Allgäu and in Heil­bronn. G&N’s exis­ting loca­ti­ons in southern Germany will be suita­bly expan­ded. The opera­tio­nal manage­ment of Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik by Björn Renz and Jörg Schwarz will conti­nue in the long term after the tran­sac­tion. In addi­tion, Björn Renz remains signi­fi­cantly invol­ved and streng­t­hens the exis­ting manage­ment of the G&N Group.

The acqui­si­tion repres­ents the fourth add-on acqui­si­tion of the G&N Group and streng­t­hens its market posi­tion as a leading manu­fac­tu­rer-inde­pen­dent service provi­der throughout Germany. This unders­cores AURELIUS Growth Capital’s active approach to expan­ding port­fo­lio compa­nies through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons of market participants.

“The exis­ting manage­ment team around Björn Renz has achie­ved impres­sive growth and deve­lo­ped the company into one of the region’s leading service provi­ders in the secu­rity and commu­ni­ca­ti­ons tech­no­logy sector in southern Germany. We are proud to work with Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik to streng­t­hen the market posi­tion of the G&N Group in Germany,” said Nico Vitense, Mana­ging Part­ner at AURELIUS Wachstumskapital.

“A part­ners­hip between the G&N Group and Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik signi­fi­cantly streng­t­hens our market posi­tion in the econo­mi­c­ally strong region of Southern Germany. We are very much looking forward to working with Björn Renz and Jörg Schwarz and their entire team,” commen­ted Stefan Carle (Mana­ging Direc­tor and Co-CEO of G&N) and Chris­tian Dahl (Mana­ging Direc­tor and Co-CEO of G&N).

“We value the G&N Group as a long-stan­ding confi­dant in the market. With AURELIUS growth capi­tal behind us, we are convin­ced that we can conti­nue to expand the company sustainably and build on the histo­ri­cal growth. The team and I are looking forward to the future toge­ther and the next steps,” added Björn Renz (Mana­ging Direc­tor of Renz Sicherheitstechnik).

On the part of AURELIUS Growth Capi­tal, Mana­ging Part­ner Nico Vitense and his team mana­ged the transaction.

Advi­sor AURELIUS Growth Capital

Blue­mont Consul­ting (Markus Frän­kel, Commer­cial Due Diligence),
Ebner Stolz (Jörg Schoberth, Finan­cial and Tax Due Diligence)
Kuzaj Witt­mann & Part­ner (Hans-Jörg Witt­mann, legal due dili­gence and legal advice).

AURELIUS is a pan-Euro­pean alter­na­tive invest­ment group with offices in London, Luxem­bourg, Munich, Amster­dam, Stock­holm, Madrid, Milan, Berlin and Düssel­dorf. AURELIUS has exten­sive opera­tio­nal exper­tise as well as expe­ri­ence and is thus in a posi­tion to acce­le­rate the value crea­tion process in its port­fo­lio companies.

The main invest­ment plat­forms are the AURELIUS Euro­pean Oppor­tu­nities IV Fund and the exchange-traded AURELIUS Equity Oppor­tu­nities SE & Co. KGaA (ISIN: DE000A0JK2A8, stock exchange symbol: AR4), which acquire group spin-offs and compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial in the midmar­ket sector. The core element of the invest­ment stra­tegy is to grow the port­fo­lio compa­nies with a team of nearly 100 in-house opera­tio­nal taskforce experts.

AURELIUS is also active in the busi­ness areas of growth capi­tal, real estate and alter­na­tive forms of finan­cing. AURELIUS Growth Capi­tal parti­ci­pa­tes in LBO tran­sac­tions for midmar­ket succes­sion solu­ti­ons. AURELIUS Real Estate Oppor­tu­nities focu­ses on real estate invest­ments with sustainable value enhan­ce­ment poten­tial through active manage­ment. AURELIUS Finance Company offers flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for compa­nies throughout Europe.

News

The Hague — Main Capi­tal Part­ners (“Main”) today announ­ced its part­ners­hip with Dutch invoi­cing soft­ware specia­list WeFact. This stra­te­gic part­ners­hip was formed to jointly acce­le­rate WeFact’s natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal growth. Under the leaders­hip of the manage­ment team and suppor­ted by Main’s exper­tise in the inter­na­tio­nal soft­ware market, WeFact will streng­t­hen its market posi­tion and further deve­lop its product port­fo­lio to provide even grea­ter value to its custo­mers and partners.

WeFact was foun­ded in 2005 and is based in Eersel, the Nether­lands. The company is a modern SaaS provi­der of invoi­cing soft­ware that faci­li­ta­tes the sending of invoices, the crea­tion of quota­ti­ons and the proces­sing of inco­m­ing invoices, so that custo­mers have conti­nuous insight and control over their admi­nis­tra­tion. With a go-to-market stra­tegy focu­sed on product-driven growth, WeFact serves more than 10,000 custo­mers in the Nether­lands, Belgium and nume­rous other Euro­pean coun­tries. More than 750 accoun­ting firms work as distri­bu­tion part­ners for WeFact and recom­mend WeFact as the ideal online invoi­cing and manage­ment solu­tion for entrepreneurs.

Growth acce­le­ra­tion

WeFact and Main will work closely toge­ther to acce­le­rate both domestic and inter­na­tio­nal growth. The growth stra­tegy inclu­des deepe­ning and broa­de­ning the product offe­ring, (inter)national sales by the inter­nal team and by part­ners, and explo­ring oppor­tu­nities for stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons. The focus of this stra­tegy is on acce­le­ra­ting orga­nic growth, inclu­ding the expan­sion of the part­ner network and incre­a­sed inter­na­tio­na­liz­a­tion. In addi­tion, the orga­nic growth stra­tegy will be acce­le­ra­ted through selec­tive stra­te­gic combi­na­ti­ons with other market players.”

Roel Korting, CEO of WeFact, said, “We look forward to working with Main and buil­ding WeFact into a leading inter­na­tio­nal company toge­ther. The combi­na­tion of Main’s exten­sive know­ledge and inter­na­tio­nal expe­ri­ence with our tech­ni­cal and commer­cial exper­tise is an excel­lent fit. This puts us in an excel­lent posi­tion to realize our ambi­tious growth plans and the further profes­sio­na­liz­a­tion of our company. In short, we are the same company, with the same people, the same core values, the same service and the same ambi­ti­ons. Howe­ver, now with the rein­for­ce­ment of Main as our stra­te­gic partner.”

Jeroen Blox, Chief Tech­no­logy Offi­cer of WeFact, adds, “To grow and support WeFact, we need a strong and expe­ri­en­ced part­ner that fits our unique WeFact culture. We have found this kind of part­ner in Main. The drive to deve­lop the best product has remai­ned unch­an­ged for 18 years. With Main as our part­ner, we can ensure conti­nuity for our custo­mers while our perfor­mance-driven team focu­ses on capi­ta­li­zing on new growth oppor­tu­nities in the market­place. This part­ners­hip will enable us to deepen and expand our product offe­ring and further roll out WeFact internationally.”

Ivo van Deude­kom (photo © Main Capi­tal), Invest­ment Direc­tor at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, summa­ri­zes: “We have known the foun­ders and the manage­ment team of WeFact for many years and are impres­sed by the way they have built the company in a sustainable and fast growing way. That’s why we’re exci­ted to work with WeFact and support the company in its next phase. WeFact is a leading soft­ware provi­der in the billing and manage­ment soft­ware market with an extre­mely modern product. With WeFact, sole proprie­tors, small busi­ness owners and SMBs can be unbur­dened and gain more insight, control and effi­ci­ency for their orga­niz­a­tion. So we’re really looking forward to working toge­ther to make the custo­mer base even bigger and more international.”

About WeFact

Foun­ded in 2005 and based in Eersel (North Brabant, the Nether­lands), WeFact has become a leading soft­ware deve­lo­per for invoi­cing and admi­nis­tra­tion. WeFact provi­des a power­ful solu­tion for sending invoices, crea­ting quotes, and proces­sing inco­m­ing invoices so busi­ness owners can get and stay in control of their admi­nis­tra­tion. The company makes its plat­form avail­able to more than 10,000 entre­pre­neurs in the Nether­lands, Belgium and nume­rous other Euro­pean compa­nies. More than 750 accoun­ting firms act as distri­bu­tors for WeFact, recom­men­ding it as the ideal online invoi­cing and manage­ment solu­tion for entre­pre­neurs. WeFact employs around 17 people. https://www.wefact.nl

About Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in Bene­lux, DACH and the Nordic coun­tries. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence streng­t­he­ning soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to realize sustainable growth and build excel­lent soft­ware groups. Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and Boston (USA). As of Octo­ber 2021, Main had over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment. Main has inves­ted in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies to date. These compa­nies have crea­ted jobs for about 9000 employees.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Stan­dard Char­te­red, through its SC Ventures arm, is inves­ting with Landes­bank Baden-Würt­tem­berg (LBBW) and Frank­furt-based finan­cial soft­ware specia­list Comyno in block­chain soft­ware provi­der SWIAT, which was foun­ded by Deka­bank in Febru­ary 2022. The invest­ment is part of the first finan­cing round for the further deve­lo­p­ment of SWIAT. As part of the tran­sac­tion, Stan­dard Char­te­red, Deka­Bank and LBBW will each hold a 30 percent stake in SWIAT, while Comyno will hold a 10 percent stake.

The goal of the new joint venture is to use SWIAT to create a uniform stan­dard for proces­sing block­chain-based secu­ri­ties. The new “SWIFT” for digi­tal assets, so to speak. In the future, the decen­tra­li­zed finan­cial infra­st­ruc­ture will enable secu­ri­ties lending, repurchase agree­ments, deri­va­ti­ves and bond issues to be sett­led in real time. SWIAT stands for Secure World­wide Inter­bank Asset Trans­fer and is an enter­prise block­chain plat­form where banks control the nodes. www.swiat.io

Advi­sor Stan­dard Char­te­red: Allen & Overy 

The Allen & Overy team was led by part­ner Dr. Hans Scho­ne­weg and senior asso­ciate Juliane Dieck­mann-Keden (both Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) and further inclu­ded part­ners Dr. Udo Olgemöl­ler (Public Law, Frank­furt) and Dr. Jens Matthes (IP, Düssel­dorf) as well as coun­sel Dr. Ioan­nis Thanos (Anti­trust) and Dr. Daniel Bolm (Real Estate). The team also inclu­ded senior asso­cia­tes Dr. Marcus Macken­sen (Corporate/Private Equity, all Hamburg), Anna Kräling (IP), Catha­rina Glugla (Data Protec­tion) and Florian Annu­schat (Tax Law, all Düssel­dorf), asso­cia­tes Dr. Stephan Bühner (Public Law, Frank­furt), Chan­tal Ahne­feld (Labor Law), Chris­tin Schlorf, Juliana Palavra Gorgueira (all Hamburg), Florian Diehl (Frank­furt) as well as Tran­sac­tion Offi­cer Dario Barbato (all Corporate/M&A, Hamburg).

 

News

Stutt­gart — TRUMPF Venture II GmbH (“TRUMPF Venture”) made an invest­ment of 13 million euros in the Series D finan­cing round of Munich-based medtech company iThera Medi­cal GmbH (“iThera Medi­cal”). TRUMPF Venture recei­ved legal and tax advice on this tran­sac­tion from Heuking Part­ner in Stutt­gart. In addi­tion to TRUMPF Venture, exis­ting inves­tors such as Bayern Kapi­tal again parti­ci­pa­ted with money from the Bava­rian Growth Fund. Further invest­ments were made by the Euro­pean Coun­cil Fund of the EU Commis­sion, Mey Capi­tal Matrix and Fluxu­nit. The company intends to use the capi­tal to deve­lop its own diagnostic product to market matu­rity and to obtain regu­la­tory appro­val in Europe and the USA.

TRUMPF Venture is a stra­te­gic as well as corpo­rate venture capi­tal inves­tor specia­li­zing in the promo­tion of promi­sing start-ups in the indus­try world­wide. TRUMPF Venture posi­ti­ons itself as a long-term deve­lo­p­ment part­ner. TRUMPF Venture usually seeks mino­rity stakes of between five and 25 percent.

iThera Medi­cal is a start-up for optoacoustic imaging in medi­cal diagnostics. A new deve­lo­p­ment of the company is the so-called MSOT tech­no­logy (Multis­pec­tral Optoacoustic Tomo­gra­phy). Through this tech­no­logy, dise­ase patterns such as cancer or fibro­sis can be diagno­sed. By conver­ting light energy into sound waves, diffe­rent types of tissue in the body can thus be charac­te­ri­zed, diffe­ren­tia­ted and displayed in 3D images.

iThera Medi­cal was foun­ded in 2010 as a spin-off of Helm­holtz Zentrum München.

Advi­sors to Trumpf Venture GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer, LL.M. (lead), Anika Lisa Dasch­mann (both Private Equity / Venture Capi­tal), Antje Münch, LL.M. (IP), all Stuttgart;
Laura-Feli­cia Bokranz, LL.M. (Univer­sity of Cape Town), Chris­toph Hexel (both Labor Law), both Düssel­dorf; Cécile Corbet, LL.M. (Patent Law), Frankfurt;
Dr. Martin Schel­len­berg (Public Law), Dr. Sarah Slavik-Schulz (Tax Law), both Hamburg

News

Hamburg / Munich — Water­land Private Equity has laun­ched two new funds — with capi­tal commit­ments tota­ling four billion euros. Despite a chal­len­ging econo­mic envi­ron­ment, nume­rous insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors thus provi­ded Water­land with more fresh capi­tal than ever before. In the DACH region, too, the Euro­pean mid-market inves­tor specia­li­zing in buy & build stra­te­gies can thus conti­nue its success story even stronger.

Waterland’s ninth fund (“WPEF IX”) has a volume of 3.5 billion euros and will invest as usual in medium-sized compa­nies in frag­men­ted growth markets. With the “Water­land Part­ners­hip Fund I”, an addi­tio­nal fund was estab­lis­hed for mino­rity share­hol­dings, e.g. in selec­ted former port­fo­lio compa­nies of Water­land. Funds amoun­ting to 500 million euros are now avail­able here. Fund­rai­sing for both funds was comple­ted in just four months and signi­fi­cantly excee­ded the origi­nal target.

“Capi­tal commit­ments from top-class insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from all over the world are not a matter of course in these tense and cautious times. Howe­ver, the commit­ment of many exis­ting and new inves­tors shows that our invest­ment philo­so­phy and the nume­rous success stories are sustainably convin­cing,” says Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs (photo © Water­land), Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land in Hamburg. In two deca­des, the company has comple­ted appro­xi­mately 1,000 tran­sac­tions, foun­ding and deve­lo­ping more than 150 new plat­forms to build success­ful long-term market leaders. The expe­ri­en­ced buy & build inves­tor imple­ments an average of appro­xi­mately ten add-on acqui­si­ti­ons for each of its port­fo­lio companies.

Five new plat­forms in the DACH region in 2022

Water­land is active in Bene­lux, DACH, Scan­di­na­via, Poland, France as well as in the British Isles and recently also in Spain. In the DACH region, Water­land initia­ted five strong plat­forms through majo­rity acqui­si­ti­ons last year: Duven­beck (a leading Euro­pean logistics service provi­der), the Sleepco Group (merger of the premium bed manu­fac­tu­rers RUF and BRUNO from Germany and the Belgian LS Bedding), Lions­Home (a leading Euro­pean product compa­ri­son plat­form), the Swiss commu­ni­ca­ti­ons consul­tancy Team Farner and the soft­ware solu­ti­ons provi­der MT. In addi­tion, more than 20 stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons were made for the port­fo­lio — despite a very tense and compe­ti­tive situa­tion in nume­rous sectors.

For the new year 2023, Dr. Gregor Hengst, part­ner at Water­land in Munich, seesDe­s­pite the vola­tile macroeco­no­mic envi­ron­ment, there are attrac­tive oppor­tu­nities in our target region. For example, tech­no­logy-based services and health­care remain inte­res­ting for us. In addi­tion, we are iden­ti­fy­ing and moni­to­ring other frag­men­ted markets where our strong buy & build approach can come into play. In the current envi­ron­ment of incre­a­sed vola­ti­lity, our close colla­bo­ra­tion with port­fo­lio compa­nies on their resi­li­ence and sustainable posi­tio­ning remains an important focus — we are expan­ding our team in the 13 Euro­pean offices for this purpose.”

In Germany and Switz­er­land, Water­land is curr­ently inves­ted in the following compa­nies in addi­tion to Duven­beck, Sleepco, Lions­Home, Farner and MT: MEDIAN (reha­bi­li­ta­tion clinic opera­tor), Schö­nes Leben Group (care faci­li­ties), Fit/One (fitness studios), Hanse­fit (company fitness offe­rings), Athera (physio­the­rapy), coeo (receiva­bles manage­ment), Horn & Company (manage­ment consul­ting), Leupold (pack­a­ging), Serrala (payment and finance soft­ware), netgo (IT services), Skay­link (cloud services), enre­ach (unified commu­ni­ca­ti­ons), mrge (adtech), Netrics (mana­ged cloud services) and GOD (enter­prise software).

About Water­land

Water­land is an inde­pen­dent private equity invest­ment firm that helps compa­nies realize their growth plans. With substan­tial finan­cial support and indus­try exper­tise, Water­land enab­les its port­fo­lio compa­nies to achieve acce­le­ra­ted growth both orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons. Water­land has offices in the Nether­lands (Bussum), Belgium (Antwerp), France (Paris), Germany (Hamburg, Munich), Poland (Warsaw), the UK (London, Manches­ter), Ireland (Dublin), Denmark (Copen­ha­gen), Spain (Barce­lona) and Switz­er­land (Zurich). Curr­ently, appro­xi­mately four­teen billion euros in equity funds are managed.

Water­land has consist­ently outper­for­med with its invest­ments since its incep­tion in 1999. The firm ranks fifth globally in the 2020 HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Perfor­mance Rankings and eighth among global private equity firms in the 2020 Preqin Consis­tent Perfor­mers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capi­tal Report. In addi­tion, Real Deals awar­ded Water­land the title of Pan-Euro­pean House of the Year 2020 at the PE Awards.
www.waterland.de

 

News

Düssel­dorf — NRW.BANK has laun­ched the fourth genera­tion of its venture fund, NRW.Venture. The volume amounts to 150 million euros, which is anot­her 50 million euros more than in previous fund genera­ti­ons. Indi­vi­dual invest­ments of up to EUR 15 million are possi­ble, compa­red with 10 previously. NRW.BANK is thus respon­ding to the sustai­ned growth in finan­cing requi­re­ments in the market. The invest­ment focus is on future-orien­ted topics such as climate tech or the digi­ta­liz­a­tion of indus­try, busi­ness and administration.

Econo­mics Minis­ter Mona Neubaur: “With NRW.BANK’s fourth venture fund, we have an offer that even better meets the finan­cing needs of high-growth start-ups. The previous fund genera­ti­ons have already shown that inno­va­tive and future-orien­ted start-ups in North Rhine-West­pha­lia find the best condi­ti­ons for success­ful deve­lo­p­ment. We are buil­ding on this and signi­fi­cantly incre­a­sing the fund volume avail­able, with a parti­cu­lar focus on future topics such as ClimateTech.”

Michael Stöl­ting (Photo © NRW.BANK), Member of the Mana­ging Board of NRW.BANK: “In the fight against climate change, we need inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons in North Rhine-West­pha­lia. Start-ups can play an essen­tial role here. At NRW.BANK, we make sure that promi­sing ideas do not fail due to financing.”

Between 20 and 30 new invest­ments are plan­ned by the end of 2027. In indi­vi­dual cases, the fund then invests up to 15 million euros in a company over several finan­cing rounds — toge­ther with private-sector co-inves­tors. Howe­ver, the commit­ment of NRW.Venture does not only include capi­tal, but also further support, among others in the areas of company buil­ding and gover­nance development.

Invest­ment focus

The invest­ment focus of the NRW.Venture funds is on indus­tries such as infor­ma­tion and commu­ni­ca­tion tech­no­logy, IT secu­rity, digi­tal economy, Inter­net of Things, life scien­ces, digi­tal health, inno­va­tive cross-sectio­nal tech­no­lo­gies, new mate­ri­als, clean­tech as well as sustaina­bi­lity tech­no­lo­gies and agri­cul­tu­ral tech­no­lo­gies. In NRW.Venture IV, special atten­tion is also paid to start-ups in the Climate Tech segments as well as those that can support indus­try, busi­ness and admi­nis­tra­tion in the digi­tal transformation.

Prede­ces­sor fund: 68 invest­ments, many success­ful exits
The previous fund genera­ti­ons of NRW.Venture have inves­ted in 68 start-ups, a signi­fi­cant number of which have already led to success­ful exits. Among them most recently, for example, the Bochum-based company phenox, which deve­lops, produ­ces and sells medi­cal tech­no­logy products for the treat­ment of strokes and vascu­lar dise­a­ses. NRW.Venture sold its shares in the company in April 2022 to Wallaby, a stra­te­gic inter­na­tio­nal part­ner of phenox.

The last fund to date, NRW.Venture III, star­ted its invest­ment period in 2018, ending with the end of 2022 and 22 invest­ments. Despite its early phase, this fund has also already recor­ded two success­ful exits.

News

Munich — The Life­Fit Group has expan­ded its brand port­fo­lio and acqui­red the Fitness­LOFT Group.
Fitness­LOFT is a leading opera­tor of fitness studios in the Full Service Best Price (FSBP) segment and opera­tes 27 studios in Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-West­pha­lia, Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt with more than 65,000 members. Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed Life­Fit Group on the acqui­si­tion of Fitness­LOFT Group.

Life­Fit Group is a leading fitness and health plat­form in Germany, combi­ning several fitness brands from the boutique, premium and full service best price segments under one roof. Fitness First is the Group’s best-known brand.

GOF provi­ded legal support to Life­Fit in all phases of the tran­sac­tion process.

Legal advi­sors Life­Fit: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Heiner Feld­haus (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Lead), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Karl Ehren­berg, LL.M. (Melbourne) (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Matthias Uelner (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A)

Pusch Wahlig Work­place Law, Munich: Ingo Sappa (Labor Law)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus
Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

News

Berlin/Cologne — The funding of The Rain­fo­rest Company has a total volume of € 36 million and was led by Kalt­roco Ltd. Katjes Green­food parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round via a secon­dary. This is one of the largest finan­cing rounds in the German food tech sector in 2022 and the largest invest­ment amount recei­ved by a women-led food tech company in Europe to date. A YPOG team co-led by Johan­nes Janning and Benja­min Ullrich advi­sed Katjes Green­food on this finan­cing round for food startup The Rain­fo­rest Company.

The Rain­fo­rest Company achie­ved impres­sive growth rates in 2018 following the entry of Katjes Green­food. Thanks to a success­ful multich­an­nel stra­tegy with listings in more than 12,000 retail loca­ti­ons world­wide and a strong D2C busi­ness, the startup has already achie­ved sales of € 20 million. In order to further expand the company’s success, the addi­tio­nal capi­tal will be used for inter­na­tio­na­liz­a­tion and product expansion.

Albana Rama (photo © THe Rain­fo­rest Company) is foun­der of The Rain­fo­rest Company, the Euro­pean pioneer of sustainable super­foods with a focus on açaí, the “super­food” from the Brazi­lian rain­fo­rest. There are curr­ently two natu­ral, vegan products: The frozen açaí puree of the tropi­cal fruit, which is curr­ently parti­cu­larly popu­lar for prepa­ring healthy bowls and deli­cious smoot­hies, and the world’s first açaí bowl-to-go in blue­berry, mango and ginger flavors.

About Katjes Greenfood

Katjes­green­food GmbH & Co. KG, based in Düssel­dorf, toge­ther with its two sister compa­nies Katjes Fassin GmbH & Co. KG and Katjes Inter­na­tio­nal GmbH & Co. KG, form the Katjes Group. As a legally inde­pen­dent invest­ment company, it invests in growth compa­nies in the food indus­try that are rede­fi­ning the future of nutri­tion with inno­va­tive and sustainable products. In addi­tion to finan­cial invest­ments, a profound network and in-depth exper­tise in food retail­ing are the central pillars on the basis of which the port­fo­lio compa­nies are built into market leaders and the iconic brands of tomorrow.

About The Rain­fo­rest Company

Since 2016, The Rain­fo­rest Company has been on a mission to provide 100% natu­ral foods to make a lasting diffe­rence in the lives of its custo­mers across Europe. The company specia­li­zes in the vegan life­style, super­foods, acai-based products, orga­nic and healthy foods, and trans­pa­rent sustaina­bi­lity. The Rain­fo­rest Company was foun­ded in 2016 and is based in Berlin.

Consul­tant Katjes Green­food: YPOG
Dr. Johan­nes Janning (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner (elect)
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, YPOG employs more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Paris/ Frank­furt a. M. — Montagu, a leading Euro­pean private equity firm, is plea­sed to announce that it has agreed to sell Main­care, a provi­der of soft­ware for French public hospi­tals and health autho­ri­ties, to Doca­poste, the digi­tal arm of the French Post Office. — The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appro­val by the French compe­ti­tion authority.

Main­care offers a compre­hen­sive range of hospi­tal infor­ma­tion systems in France, where it is a leader in elec­tro­nic health records and solu­ti­ons for hospi­tal manage­ment, inter­ope­ra­bi­lity and tele­me­di­cine. With its inte­gra­ted soft­ware suite, the company helps public hospi­tals, payers and insu­rers imple­ment success­ful digi­tal stra­te­gies for the bene­fit of patients.

Since acqui­ring Main­care in 2018, Montagu has worked with the company to respond to the rapidly chan­ging needs of poli­cy­ma­kers and hospi­tals, parti­cu­larly in the wake of the Covid 19 pande­mic. Signi­fi­cant invest­ment in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment led to the deve­lo­p­ment of a new genera­tion of elec­tro­nic health records and the moder­niz­a­tion of Maincare’s tech­no­logy to ensure that its products are inter­ope­ra­ble, SaaS-enab­led and at the fore­front of inno­va­tion in cybersecurity.

Under Montagu’s leaders­hip, Maincare’s busi­nes­ses acqui­red in the past were brought toge­ther orga­niz­a­tio­nally and tech­no­lo­gi­cally to deve­lop a common vision and stra­tegy for the company and drive effi­ci­en­cies. Led by a strong and unified manage­ment team, the chan­ges helped create a custo­mer-centric culture that puts the needs of medi­cal staff and pati­ents at the center of the organization.

Guil­laume Jaba­lot, Part­ner at Montagu: “Main­care is an excel­lent example of Montagu’s stra­tegy to part­ner with leading compa­nies that offer important products and services. We are proud of the success that Main­care has achie­ved, and we are confi­dent that the company will conti­nue to thrive under Docaposte’s leadership.”

Fran­çois-Xavier Floren, CEO of Main­care, commen­ted, “Part­ne­ring with Doca­poste will allow us to address one of the biggest chal­len­ges in our market — the impor­t­ance of provi­ding custo­mers with long-term support from a trus­ted part­ner present in soft­ware, hosting and services. Over the past two years, with Montagu’s support, we have success­fully imple­men­ted a trans­for­ma­tion plan aimed at impro­ving one of the persis­tent chal­len­ges of the French hospi­tal system by giving time back to care­gi­vers.” The manage­ment team and all Main­care employees are confi­dent that the part­ners­hip with Doca­poste will bring further signi­fi­cant value to our custo­mers and the market.”

 

News

Cologne/ Berlin — In the latest finan­cing round of the AI-based trans­la­tor DeepL, venture capi­tal inves­tor Atomico was advi­sed by YPOG. In addi­tion to Atomico, IVP, Besse­mer Venture Part­ners and WiL as well as exis­ting inves­tors Bench­mark and btov parti­ci­pa­ted in the funding.

The Colo­gne-based startup emer­ged from the online diction­ary Linguee in 2017 and curr­ently offers 29 languages. Reve­nues are gene­ra­ted prima­rily from paid services, which include more features and privacy opti­ons than the free and open-access version. The company’s latest round of funding demons­tra­tes the incre­a­sing commer­cial impor­t­ance of AI-based busi­ness models to the market and profes­sio­nal sectors.

Foun­der & CEO Jaros­law “Jarek” Kuty­low­ski is a passio­nate deve­lo­per and star­ted working on perso­nal projects he found useful and suita­ble for ever­y­day use at the age of 10. He later earned a docto­rate in compu­ter science with a focus on mathe­ma­tics. His fond­ness for languages and new tech­no­lo­gies led him into the world of AI trans­la­tion, in large part due to his multi­lin­gual back­ground and sensi­bi­li­ties, having been born in Poland and raised in Germany.

The new capi­tal will be used for further rese­arch acti­vi­ties and the further deve­lo­p­ment of the company’s soft­ware. Further­more, DeepL is working on addi­tio­nal services and features and plans further inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

About Atomico

Atomico invests in emer­ging tech foun­ders in Series A and beyond — with a parti­cu­lar focus on Europe — lever­aging its exten­sive opera­tio­nal expe­ri­ence to acce­le­rate their growth. Since its foun­ding in 2006, Atomico has worked with over 100 ambi­tious teams — inclu­ding those at Klarna, Super­cell, Graph­core, Compass, Mess­a­ge­Bird, Master­class, Atten­tive Mobile, Pipe­drive and Hinge Health. Atomico’s team of foun­ders, inves­tors and opera­tio­nal leaders has been respon­si­ble for global expan­sion, hiring and marke­ting at compa­nies ranging from Skype and Google to Twit­ter and Uber. The company curr­ently has $4 billion in assets under management.

About DeepL

DeepL is a German company that aims to elimi­nate language barri­ers around the world through the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Since 2017, the company has offe­red DeepL Trans­la­tor, a machine trans­la­tion system that achie­ves the best trans­la­tion quality in the world accord­ing to blind tests, at www.DeepL.com. In addi­tion, DeepL provi­des profes­sio­nal products for compa­nies, entre­pre­neurs and trans­la­tors. To date, more than one billion people have used the services of DeepL. The company is led by foun­der and CEO Jaros­law Kuty­low­ski and backed by inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors such as Bench­mark and btov.

Advi­sor Atomico: YPOG
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Tobias Lovett (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate
Dr. Matthias Schatz (Corpo­rate), Partner
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Andreas Bergt­hal­ler (Corpo­rate), Senior Associate
Pia Meven (Tran­sac­tions), Associate
Dr. Chris­toph Lütten­berg (Corpo­rate), Associate

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany.
The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, YPOG employs more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Düssel­dorf — NRW.BANK is one of the first German finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons to issue a digi­tal bearer bond under the Elec­tro­nic Secu­ri­ties Act. This makes it one of the pioneers in the digi­tiz­a­tion of this still very analog area in the secu­ri­ties market. Auto­ma­ted emis­sion process incre­a­ses speed

“The hand­ling of our first digi­tal bond issue is anot­her consis­tent step for us to actively shape the tech­no­lo­gi­cal trans­for­ma­tion in the finan­cial sector,” says Gabriela Pant­ring (photo © NRW.Bank), member of NRW.BANK’s Mana­ging Board. “A fully digi­tal issue signi­fi­cantly stream­li­nes the process while ensu­ring trans­pa­rency. It demons­tra­tes our commit­ment to digi­tiz­a­tion in the secu­ri­ties sector.”

The issue of the digi­tal bond with a volume of €20 million, two-year matu­rity and a coupon of 2.875% was hand­led via Deut­sche Börse Group’s D7 plat­form. The issu­ance of the bond was suppor­ted by LBBW.

The D7 plat­form repla­ces the tradi­tio­nal vault with a digi­tal secu­ri­ties regis­ter. This is an important first step that will enable further digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of subse­quent sett­le­ment proces­ses. — NRW.BANK’s digi­tal bearer bond is listed on the Düssel­dorf Stock Exchange under WKN NWB1W2.

In summer 2021, the Elec­tro­nic Secu­ri­ties Act (eWpG) crea­ted the legal basis for issuing digi­tal secu­ri­ties. Issu­ers are no longer requi­red to depo­sit certi­fi­ca­tes of secu­ri­ties in paper form with Deut­sche Börse subsi­diary Clear­stream. Veri­fi­ca­tion and storage is also now no longer done in analog, but in a digi­tal emis­si­ons register.

In 2019, NRW.BANK had already become the first deve­lo­p­ment bank to process a promis­sory note loan tran­sac­tion on a same-day and paper­less basis via block­chain. This was follo­wed in Septem­ber 2020 by the first block­chain-based and thus fully digi­tal and legally secure own issue of a promis­sory note loan.

About NRW.BANK
NRW.BANK is the deve­lo­p­ment bank for North Rhine-West­pha­lia. It supports its owner, the state of NRW, in its struc­tu­ral and econo­mic policy tasks. In its three promo­tion fields “Economy”, “Housing” and “Infrastructure/Municipalities”, NRW.BANK uses a broad range of promo­tion instru­ments: from low-inte­rest deve­lo­p­ment loans to equity finan­cing and advi­sory services. It works toge­ther with all banks and savings banks in NRW on a compe­ti­tion-neutral basis. In its promo­tion acti­vi­ties, NRW.BANK also takes into account exis­ting offers from the federal government, the state and the Euro­pean Union. www.nrwbank.de

News

Frank­furt am Main / Bous — KTP Kunst­stoff Palet­ten­tech­nik GmbH (KTP) has acqui­red the majo­rity of shares in K2 PAK of Koper, Slove­nia. KTP was suppor­ted in this by the Frank­furt-based invest­ment company VR Equi­ty­p­art­ner, which holds a mino­rity stake in the Saar­land-based company. KTP is one of the Euro­pean market leaders in the produc­tion and deve­lo­p­ment of fold­able large contai­ners and large load carri­ers as well as pallets and carrier systems made of plastic. With the acqui­si­tion of K2 PAK, KTP is streng­t­he­ning its busi­ness area around the inner pack­a­ging of trans­port boxes, lever­aging valu­able syner­gies between the two compa­nies and conti­nuing its long-term growth strategy.

KTP had already acqui­red a majo­rity stake in K2 PAK at the begin­ning of 2022; the stake was now signi­fi­cantly incre­a­sed again at the turn of the year. The remai­ning shares remain with the mana­ging part­ner Marco Krmac. For more than two deca­des, the family-owned company K2 PAK has been deve­lo­ping and supply­ing advan­ced indus­trial reus­able pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons made of a wide variety of mate­ri­als as an inner packer, provi­ding opti­mum protec­tion for custo­mers’ compon­ents during trans­port. There are already long-stan­ding busi­ness rela­ti­ons­hips with KTP — the inte­gra­tion will enable further syner­gies to be lever­aged and deve­lo­p­ment and inno­va­tion oppor­tu­nities to be driven forward.

KTP Kunst­stoff Palet­ten­tech­nik GmbH, based in Bous (Saar­land), has specia­li­zed in the manu­fac­ture and deve­lo­p­ment of fold­able large contai­ners and large load carri­ers as well as pallets and carrier systems made of plastic since 1988. The advan­ta­ges of the KTP contai­ners are the ease of use and the space saving due to volume reduc­tion. In addi­tion, resour­ces are conser­ved — both through the use of recy­cled raw mate­ri­als and the possi­bi­lity of retur­ning them to the raw mate­rial cycle, and thanks to the lower trans­port weight. VR Equi­ty­p­art­ner (VREP) had acqui­red a mino­rity stake in KTP at the end of 2011 to support manage­ment in explo­i­t­ing the company’s further growth poten­tial and driving inter­na­tio­na­liz­a­tion. From its head­quar­ters in Bous and its Chinese sales loca­tion in Taicang, KTP now exports its products to over 100 countries.

“The 2022 finan­cial year was the best in KTP’s history,” says a deligh­ted KTP Mana­ging Direc­tor Martin Hent­schel: “We also acqui­red a majo­rity stake in K2 PAK, thus ente­ring the inner pack­a­ging market. This expands our offer to our custo­mers, incre­a­ses our compe­ti­ti­ve­ness and enhan­ces custo­mer proximity.”

Chris­tian Futter­lieb, Mana­ging Direc­tor at VR Equi­ty­p­art­ner, also welco­mes the new part­ners­hip: “With the acqui­si­tion of K2 PAK, KTP is conti­nuing its success­ful growth story: after the strong expan­sion of produc­tion capa­ci­ties, the ongo­ing diver­si­fi­ca­tion out of the auto­mo­tive sector into other indus­tries and the success­ful inter­na­tio­na­liz­a­tion, the acqui­si­tion of K2 PAK is a real game chan­ger. The address­able market has incre­a­sed signi­fi­cantly and now offers custo­mer access through both trans­port boxes and inner packaging.”

The tran­sac­tion team of VR Equi­ty­p­art­ner: Sarah Oster­mann, Simone Weck

Advi­sor VR Equitypartner:
Finan­cial Due Dili­gence: ECOVIS CF, Ljub­l­jana, with Chris­toph Geymayer
Legal due dili­gence and legal advice: CMS REICH-ROHRWIG HAINZ / Senica & Part­ners, Ljub­l­jana, with Aleš Lunder

News

Baienfurt/ Munich — The previous share­hol­ders of Hobe Tools Holding GmbH, FTSA Betei­li­gungs GmbH, INTEGRA Treu­hand­ge­sell­schaft mbH Steu­er­be­ra­tungs­ge­sell­schaft, AURELIUS Growth Invest­ments S.à r.l. and Hobe Mana­ging Direc­tor Dr. Jens-Jörg Eßer, have sold all their shares in Hobe to Indutrade Switz­er­land AG. The tran­sac­tion took place within the frame­work of a compe­ti­tive bidding process.

Hobe GmbH is a niche manu­fac­tu­rer of micro-precision tools foun­ded in 1971 and based in Baien­furt, Germany. The main custo­mers are compa­nies in indus­tries such as medi­cal tech­no­logy, mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring, elec­tro­nics, construc­tion and metrology.

Indutrade is an inter­na­tio­nal tech­no­logy and indus­trial group foun­ded in 1978 with more than 200 affi­lia­ted compa­nies in around 30 coun­tries. Indutrade gene­ra­ted sales of 21.7 billion Swedish kronor in 2021 and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.

Hobe will be inte­gra­ted into Indutrade’s DACH busi­ness area.

Advi­sor to seller: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Munich

Dr. Niko­laus von Jacobs, Foto (Lead), Dr. Germar Enders (Coun­sel; both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Phil­ipp Schäuble (Labor Law), Nina Siewert, Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; both Tax Law, Frank­furt); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Fabian Appa­doo, Dr. Robert Feind, LL.M., Sebas­tian Gerst­ner, Benja­min Macie­jew­ski, LL.M., Matthias Wein­gut (all Corporate/M&A)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery

McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,200 lawy­ers in more than 20 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Our lawy­ers cover the entire spec­trum of commer­cial and corpo­rate law with their advice. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit: https://www.mwe.com/de/

News

Hungen/ Wetz­lar — Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor, in asso­cia­tion with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance a leading German M&A consul­ting boutique with a focus on medium-sized succes­si­ons, accom­pa­nies bgm baugrund­be­ra­tung GmbH (“bgm”, photo © bmg), specia­li­zed in soil and subsoil inves­ti­ga­tion, in the success­ful sale of the company to VINCI Ener­gies. bgm will hence­forth operate under the guise of Omexom — VINCI Ener­gies’ brand for energy infrastructures.

Foun­ded in 2008 by Mathias Müssig, bgm specia­li­zes in soil and subsoil inves­ti­ga­ti­ons. The company offers consul­ting services in the fields of engi­nee­ring geology, inves­ti­ga­tion of conta­mi­na­ted sites, geother­mal energy, preser­va­tion of evidence as well as control tests in the field of earthworks and compac­tion controls in asphalt paving.

“With the added exper­tise of bgm, we are expan­ding our port­fo­lio in over­head line construc­tion for subsoil inves­ti­ga­ti­ons at pylon sites. Compa­nies in this market segment are rare and we are plea­sed to be able to offer our custo­mers a wide range of plan­ning services,” says Dr. Jochen Röhm, Omexom Divi­sion Mana­ger, into whose divi­sion the company will be inte­gra­ted. “We warmly welcome the team of bgm as a new member in our Omexom family and wish all colleagues a success­ful start.”

“We are convin­ced that in VINCI Ener­gies we have found a buyer that provi­des our company with the right frame­work for conti­nued growth and future deve­lo­p­ment. We are deligh­ted to become part of VINCI Ener­gies. On the one hand, this will enable us to bene­fit from a network of specia­lists and share and, on the other, streng­t­hen our own compe­ten­cies,” says Mathias Müssig, who will remain on the manage­ment board with Jörn Martini as head of the new busi­ness unit.

“The entire construc­tion and energy indus­try is facing a radi­cal change, or is already expe­ri­en­cing it to a large extent. With VINCI Ener­gies, bgm will have a strong stra­te­gic part­ner at its side in the future, which will certainly contri­bute to the further deve­lo­p­ment of the company,” sums up Sebas­tian Wissig, project mana­ger at Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor. “Due to the common stra­te­gic goals of bgm and VINCI Ener­gies, the process was very construc­tive on both sides from the very begin­ning, so that we were able to work out a good and future-orien­ted solu­tion in close coor­di­na­tion with all parties and success­fully conclude the tran­sac­tion,” adds Phil­ipp Panther, project employee at Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and part of the team around Sebas­tian Wissig.

About Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance

Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor GmbH, in asso­cia­tion with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance GmbH, is one of the leading M&A consul­ting firms in the German SME sector. The team of almost 30 experts accom­pa­nies medium-sized entre­pre­neurs exclu­si­vely through the entire sales process. “Our task is to safe­guard life’s work,” is how we see oursel­ves. In doing so, custo­mers bene­fit from a unique approach that has won multi­ple awards from the busi­ness press, and which protects the iden­tity of their compa­nies to a special degree. Thanks to their excel­lent access to medium-sized compa­nies, Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance have also estab­lis­hed them­sel­ves as a strong part­ner at the side of renow­ned natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal major compa­nies and inves­tors in acquisitions.
www.nachfolgekontor.de www.sonntagcf.com

About Omexom

Omexom is VINCI Ener­gies’ brand for energy infra­st­ruc­tures. Omexom supports its custo­mers in all tasks rela­ted to the imple­men­ta­tion of the energy tran­si­tion. Omexom’s goal is to work with its custo­mers to create solu­ti­ons for sustainable energy and mobi­lity supply. The offe­ring covers the entire range of services for energy infra­st­ruc­tures: From engi­nee­ring to main­ten­ance of all infra­st­ruc­tures for power genera­tion, trans­mis­sion and distri­bu­tion and that up to the end consumer’s electri­city meter inclu­ding all energy-rela­ted services for muni­ci­pa­li­ties and commu­nities. In Germany, Omexom opera­tes nati­on­wide for network opera­tors, public utili­ties, muni­ci­pal energy suppliers, trade and indus­try as well as for Deut­sche Bahn.
2021: 3.7 billion euros in sales, of which 675 million euros in Germany // 23,500 employees, of which 3,800 in Germany // 435 busi­ness units, of which 75 in Germany // 37 countries
www.omexom.de

About VINCI Energies

In a chan­ging world, VINCI Ener­gies is acce­le­ra­ting the envi­ron­men­tal tran­si­tion by play­ing a concrete role in shaping two profound trans­for­ma­ti­ons: Digi­ta­liz­a­tion and the energy tran­si­tion. As a market-orien­ted inte­gra­tor of custo­mi­zed, cross-tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons, we support our custo­mers in imple­men­ting tech­no­lo­gies that bene­fit society and protect the envi­ron­ment — from plan­ning through imple­men­ta­tion and opera­tion to main­ten­ance. With our 1,800 regio­nally based, agile and inno­va­tive busi­ness units, we are invol­ved in the energy-rela­ted decisi­ons, infra­st­ruc­tures and proces­ses of our custo­mers and ensure grea­ter relia­bi­lity, effi­ci­ency and sustaina­bi­lity every day.
2021: 15.1 billion euros sales // 85,700 employees // 1,800 busi­ness units // 57 countries
www.vinci-energies.com

News

Amster­dam / Munich — Funds advi­sed by Equi­stone Part­ners Europe (“Equi­stone”) are acqui­ring a majo­rity stake in BUKO Infra­sup­port and BUKO Waakt (“BUKO”), two leading provi­ders of outsour­ced traf­fic and secu­rity manage­ment solu­ti­ons in the Nether­lands. Equi­stone will work with current share­hol­der Scheybe­eck Parti­ci­pa­ties, the Burger family’s family office, as well as the exten­ded manage­ment team that will take a reverse stake in the company as part of the transaction.

It was important for Scheybe­eck Parti­ci­pa­ties to find a highly expe­ri­en­ced part­ner who could support the compa­nies’ growth ambi­ti­ons with strong finan­cial backing and a large inter­na­tio­nal network. BUKO CEO Robert Emme­rich will conti­nue to lead both compa­nies as Mana­ging Direc­tor. The part­ners­hip with Equi­stone will focus prima­rily on further expan­ding the market presence in the Nether­lands as well as targe­ted expan­sion into neigh­bo­ring coun­tries, suppor­ted by strong market dyna­mics. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the tran­sac­tion, which is still subject to appro­val by the rele­vant compe­ti­tion authorities.

BUKO was foun­ded in 1962 in the Nether­lands and consists of three busi­ness units: BUKO Infra­sup­port, BUKO Trans­port and BUKO Waakt. BUKO Trans­port is not part of this tran­sac­tion. BUKO Infra­sup­port specia­li­zes in offe­ring end-to-end outsour­cing solu­ti­ons in temporary traf­fic manage­ment. With its compre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of services — from the design, plan­ning, permit­ting, provi­sion and collec­tion, as well as the manage­ment of requi­red road signage and safety equip­ment for on-site road works — Infra­sup­port parti­cu­larly serves contrac­tors and autho­ri­ties invol­ved in utility-rela­ted, urban and rural road works. BUKO Waakt is a provi­der of temporary secu­rity solu­ti­ons with a focus on camera surveil­lance, intru­sion detec­tion systems as well as access control systems, which are used espe­cially on construc­tion sites of resi­den­tial and public buildings.

The two busi­ness units BUKO Infra­sup­port and BUKO Waakt combine strong exper­tise with a custo­mer- and result-orien­ted approach, high-quality equip­ment and a convic­tion for the highest safety stan­dards. In this way, the company is making an important contri­bu­tion to ensu­ring the prescri­bed safety measu­res around road and construc­tion projects and to meeting the incre­a­sing safety regu­la­ti­ons in the best possi­ble way. With several thousand projects comple­ted each year and its firmly estab­lis­hed long-stan­ding and trus­ting custo­mer rela­ti­ons­hips, the company is consi­de­red one of the largest provi­ders of custo­mi­zed traf­fic and secu­rity solu­ti­ons in the Nether­lands. It curr­ently employs more than 350 people and gene­ra­tes annual sales of around 70 million euros.

The part­ners­hip with Equi­stone is expec­ted to further drive the company’s conti­nued growth and deve­lo­p­ment. The main focus here is on making opti­mum use of the strong market momen­tum, prima­rily driven by further invest­ments in infra­st­ruc­ture asso­cia­ted with digi­tiz­a­tion and the energy tran­si­tion, as well as in road main­ten­ance, and on incre­a­sing the company’s geogra­phi­cal presence.

“I am very plea­sed to part­ner with Equi­stone, espe­cially due to their indus­try exper­tise gained in their nume­rous invest­ments in rele­vant port­fo­lio compa­nies, their presence in the rele­vant regi­ons, and their part­ner-like and excep­tio­nally strong team. I look forward to taking the growth of our company to the next level while main­tai­ning our family culture,” said Robert Emme­rich, CEO of BUKO Infra­sup­port and BUKO Waakt.

“BUKO is already excel­lently posi­tio­ned — Equi­stone wants to take advan­tage of this in a targe­ted manner and support BUKO in further streng­t­he­ning its service offe­ring as well as its market posi­tion in the Nether­lands through orga­nic growth,” explains Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Part­ner in Equistone’s Amster­dam office. “In addi­tion, Equi­stone will focus on incre­a­sing the market pene­tra­tion of certain regi­ons in the Nether­lands and will also explore the possi­bi­lity of expan­ding into neigh­bo­ring coun­tries through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons,” added Tanja Berg, invest­ment direc­tor at Equistone.

The tran­sac­tion was accom­pa­nied by Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Tanja Berg (photo) and Josh Aalbers.

Advi­sor Equistone:
PwC (Finan­cial, Tax, IT, and Debt Advi­sory), DC Advi­sory (M&A), Roland Berger and Munich Stra­tegy (Commer­cial), Vesper and Clif­ford Chance (Legal).

Consul­tant BUKO:
Lincoln Inter­na­tio­nal (M&A), Deloitte (finan­cial, tax advi­sory), Strategy& (commer­cial) and De Brauw Black­stone West­broek (legal).

About Equi­stone Part­ners Europe

Equi­stone Part­ners Europe is one of the most active Euro­pean equity inves­tors with a team of more than 40 invest­ment specia­lists in seven offices in the Nether­lands, Germany, Switz­er­land, France and the UK. The Equi­stone funds invest prima­rily in estab­lis­hed medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since incep­tion, equity has been inves­ted in more than 170 tran­sac­tions. The port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses around 50 compa­nies across Europe, inclu­ding around six active invest­ments in Bene­lux. Equi­stone is curr­ently inves­ting from its sixth fund, which closed in March 2018 with €2.8 billion. In addi­tion, the “Equi­stone Reinvest­ment Fund” was recently laun­ched, from which it is possi­ble to reinvest in mino­rity posi­ti­ons following sales of port­fo­lio compa­nies from the main funds. www.equistonepe.com

News

Frank­furt — KKR, a leading global inves­tor, has appoin­ted Harald Dürr (photo) as Mana­ging Direc­tor of KKR’s Client and Part­ner Group (CPG) to lead its Family Capi­tal client busi­ness in the DACH region. In his role, Harald Dürr will focus on expan­ding KKR’s offe­ring for family offices and further streng­t­he­ning KKR’s posi­tio­ning in the DACH region. He also beco­mes part of KKR’s Family Capi­tal team in EMEA, which was estab­lis­hed in 2014 to build long-term, trus­ted rela­ti­ons­hips with high net worth fami­lies and entrepreneurs.

Harald Dürr spent more than 25 years at Deut­sche Bank, where he held various manage­ment posi­ti­ons and was respon­si­ble for the Family Capi­tal divi­sion, most recently as Senior Rela­ti­ons­hip Mana­ger and Mana­ging Direc­tor in Frank­furt. In these roles, he focu­sed on complex client situa­tions and became a trus­ted advi­sor to some of the bank’s most important clients, inclu­ding family offices, busi­ness foun­ders and entre­pre­neurs. He also helped the bank incre­ase its market share among the top 500 fami­lies in Germany.

Previously, he was a member of the advi­sory board of two German medium-sized compa­nies, where he addi­tio­nally advi­sed an inter­na­tio­nal wealthy family in connec­tion with their German invest­ments. Chris­tian Ollig, Part­ner and Head of DACH at KKR, said: “We are very plea­sed to have Harald Dürr join our growing team. With his exten­sive expe­ri­ence in serving family offices and entre­pre­neurs, Harald is an excel­lent addi­tion to our Client and Part­ner Group in the DACH region. We are plea­sed to have Harald Dürr join our team and lead KKR’s rela­ti­ons­hips with this special group of inves­tors as we conti­nue to expand our presence in Germany.”

Harald Dürr, Mana­ging Direc­tor, CPG at KKR in Germany, said: “I am deligh­ted to join KKR’s team in Frank­furt. I look forward to lever­aging my expe­ri­ence, know­ledge and network in the German asset manage­ment market to further streng­t­hen KKR’s exten­sive offe­ring in the DACH region and attract new inves­tors in the growing family capi­tal space.”

Harald Dürr’s appoint­ment is part of KKR’s ongo­ing efforts to expand its team in the DACH region and follows a number of appoint­ments in KKR’s Client and Part­ner Group, inclu­ding the appoint­ment of Hagen Raab as a Direc­tor in 2018 and Steven Bayly as a
Mana­ging Direc­tor in 2021, as well as the appoint­ment of Moritz Mondo­vits, who joined KKR in 2022 as Princi­pal toge­ther with Hanna Kunz­mann as Asso­ciate. KKR’s Client and Part­ner Group is respon­si­ble for advi­sing and serving KKR’s Limi­ted Part­ners and works to further diver­sify KKR’s client base. The team is respon­si­ble for attrac­ting new inves­tors from all regi­ons and from various insti­tu­ti­ons. By incre­a­singly expan­ding its capa­bi­li­ties in this area, KKR aims to address the growing impor­t­ance of family offices and intro­duce them to the full range of KKR’s invest­ment opportunities.

About KKR

KKR is a leading global inves­tor provi­ding alter­na­tive asset manage­ment, capi­tal markets and insurance solu­ti­ons. The focus is on genera­ting attrac­tive invest­ment returns through a long-term and disci­pli­ned invest­ment approach, employ­ing highly skil­led profes­sio­nals and suppor­ting growth at its invest­ment proper­ties and in the commu­nities where KKR has a presence. KKR finan­ces funds that invest in private equity, credit products, real assets, and — through stra­te­gic part­ners — hedge funds. KKR’s insurance subsi­dia­ries offer reti­re­ment, life and reinsurance products under the manage­ment of Global Atlan­tic Finan­cial Group. www.kkr.com, Twit­ter @KKR_Co.

News

Wess­ling / Munich. — Deut­sche Aircraft Holdings (DAH), the sole owner of the compa­nies in the Deut­sche Aircraft Group, recently secu­red an important mino­rity inte­rest in DAH Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH, which is jointly held by OHB and AFK.

The invest­ment is being made through a joint venture between aero­space company OHB SE and invest­ment company AFK Enter­prise AG, and will drive the deve­lo­p­ment of new green avia­tion tech­no­lo­gies inclu­ding D328eco™, an envi­ron­ment­ally friendly version of the proven Do328® short-range passen­ger aircraft manu­fac­tu­red by Deut­sche Aircraft GmbH. Under the agree­ment, the inves­tors have the option of acqui­ring further shares up to a majo­rity stake at a later date.

Deut­sche Aircraft’s D328 series is based on the proud heri­tage of Dornier, and Deut­sche Aircraft holds the type certi­fi­cate for the Do328®. With new propul­sion systems, latest genera­tion avia­tion tech­no­logy and more seats, the D328eco will set new stan­dards for envi­ron­ment­ally friendly short-haul flying. Deut­sche Aircraft is also inves­ti­ga­ting various alter­na­tive fuels and future climate-neutral propul­sion systems as part of its product road­map. The Do328 is the last commer­cial aircraft to date to have been deve­lo­ped and built enti­rely in-house by a German company — and this will also be the case with the D328eco.

The invest­ment in DAH is subject to the appro­val of the German government, which is suppor­ting the deve­lo­p­ment of the D328eco with a large-volume deve­lo­p­ment cost loan and is also suppor­ting the deve­lo­p­ment of clean avia­tion initia­ti­ves at Deut­sche Aircraft. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the first quar­ter of 2023, once regu­la­tory appro­vals and other custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons are satisfied.

Advi­sors to Deut­sche Aircraft Holdings (DAH): SKW Schwarz
Lead Part­ner Dr. Kolja Petro­vicki toge­ther with Cohen & Gres­ser (US law, UK law) and Carey Olsen (Cayman Islands law).

Consul­ting Attor­neys: Dr. Kolja Petro­vicki, LL.M. (UPenn), (Corporate/M&A, lead), Dr. Oliver M. Bühr (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Tatjana Schroe­der (Rest­ruc­tu­ring), Alex­an­der Möller, Sabrina Hoch­brück­ner (both Labor Law), Stefan Skulesch (Tax) (all Frank­furt); Dr. Klaus Jankow­ski, Maria Rothä­mel (both Public Law, both Berlin), Heiko Wunder­lich (Tax); Eva Bona­cker (Merger Control) (both Munich).

About SKW Schwarz

SKW Schwarz is an inde­pen­dent law firm with 130 lawy­ers, four loca­ti­ons and a common claim: We think ahead. As a full-service law firm and member of Terra­Lex, we are globally networ­ked and advise in all rele­vant areas of busi­ness law. Also in an area that is parti­cu­larly important for compa­nies: the future. We analyze, create clarity and provide advice today in the key legal areas of tomorrow.

About AFK Enterprise

AFK Enter­prise AG, based in Switz­er­land, the indus­trial arm of the AFK Kumar Family Office, is a private family office char­ged with the preser­va­tion, manage­ment and growth of the AFK Kumar family’s wealth. AFK makes stra­te­gic invest­ments across a broad spec­trum of markets, with a focus on equity and growth capi­tal. With its inter­na­tio­nal focus, AFK actively pursues and enga­ges in a variety of high-tech invest­ment oppor­tu­nities in Europe, the U.S. the Middle East, India, Asia, and emer­ging markets.

About OHB SE

OHB SE is a German space and tech­no­logy group and one of the leading inde­pen­dent forces in the Euro­pean space indus­try. With many years of expe­ri­ence in the realiz­a­tion of sophisti­ca­ted projects, OHB SE is excel­lently posi­tio­ned in inter­na­tio­nal compe­ti­tion and offers its custo­mers a broad port­fo­lio of inno­va­tive products in the three busi­ness units: Space Systems, Aero­space and Digi­tal. The company employs around 3,000 people and gene­ra­tes total sales of around one billion euros.

About Deut­sche Aircraft GmbH

Deut­sche Aircraft is Germany’s new targe­ted OEM. Deut­sche Aircraft’s new D328eco™ aircraft, based on the legacy of avia­tion pioneers, is desi­gned to signi­fi­cantly reduce opera­ting and main­ten­ance costs and lower the over­all carbon foot­print. This is in line with Deut­sche Aircraft’s vision and stra­te­gic road­map to support a more sustainable future for avia­tion. The D328eco will offer maxi­mum flexi­bi­lity as it can run on exis­ting avia­tion gaso­line as well as 100% H2-PtL. The aircraft is assem­bled in the paper­less finis­hing line (FAL) in Leipzig/Germany. All para­me­ters are in high demand in the current avia­tion envi­ron­ment, and there is already incre­a­sed inte­rest in the D328eco among poten­tial custo­mers and partners.

News

Gelsenkirchen/ Munich — Komatsu announ­ced today that it has ente­red into an agree­ment to acquire GHH Group GmbH (GHH), a manu­fac­tu­rer of machi­nes for under­ground mining, tunne­ling and foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring head­quar­te­red in Gelsen­kir­chen, Germany. The GHH Group deve­lops and produ­ces vehi­cles for under­ground and tunnel construc­tion. Komatsu, head­quar­te­red in Tokyo, opera­tes as a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of construc­tion, mining, fores­try and indus­trial equip­ment in more than 140 coun­tries. Komatsu was advi­sed by Henge­ler Müller in this transaction.

GHH was foun­ded in the 1960s and is now part of the German Schmidt Kranz Group. The company offers a wide range of machi­nes focu­sing on loaders and arti­cu­la­ted dump trucks in the medium-seam mining, narrow-gauge and civil engi­nee­ring market segments. With this acqui­si­tion, Komatsu will acquire GHH’s facto­ries and conver­sion capa­bi­li­ties in key markets in addi­tion to its robust product offe­ring and talen­ted workforce.

We are very exci­ted about this acqui­si­tion as it repres­ents a great oppor­tu­nity for Komatsu to expand its under­ground mining equip­ment offe­ring and acce­le­rate new product deve­lo­p­ment through syner­gies with Komatsu’s exis­ting team and product offe­ring,” said Peter Salditt, presi­dent and CEO of Komatsu Mining Corp. “With the addi­tion of GHH’s facto­ries and rebuild opera­ti­ons in key markets in Europe, South Africa, India and Chile. We also want to use it to streng­t­hen produc­tion and service capa­ci­ties for our customers.”

Komatsu intends to conti­nue GHH’s excel­lent service and plans to operate as usual after the acqui­si­tion. The combi­ned team will then work toge­ther to expand Komatsu’s under­ground mining equip­ment offe­ring and help custo­mers access products in new areas.

“GHH is plea­sed to embark on a new jour­ney with a strong player in the mining world. This opens up tremen­dous oppor­tu­nities for our people and our products to evolve and grow beyond what we had hoped for,” said Dr. Jan Petzold, CEO of GHH Group. “This is the next logi­cal step in beco­m­ing a true global player, and we look forward to beco­m­ing part of the Komatsu family.”

In fact, GHH may be consi­de­red a rock in the indus­try, with roots dating back to 1758. At its peak as a mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring conglo­me­rate, it had almost 100,000 employees. Indus­trial giants like MAN, Roland and MTU were once among them. In 1995, GHH Fahr­zeuge GmbH split off as a specia­list for under­ground equip­ment. Within 25 years, the manu­fac­tu­rer advan­ced to become a real player in the world market.

GHH supplies almost ever­ything that is on wheels in deep mining and espe­cially in raw mate­rial mining. GHH exports its loaders, dump trucks, concrete mixers, and shovelers around the globe. This inclu­des dril­ling rigs, anchor hand­ling equip­ment and tunnel­ling machi­nes from Mine Master as well as flat travel­ling loaders from GHH Mining Machi­nes. A dense part­ner network under­pins the company’s claim to be a “total solu­tion provi­der” offe­ring ever­ything from a single source. The offi­cial closing of the acqui­si­tion is sche­du­led for the first half of 2023.

Under the ongo­ing medium-term manage­ment plan “DANTOTSU Value — Toge­ther, to ‘The Next’ for sustainable growth,” Komatsu is working to expand its under­ground hard­rock mining offe­rings and create new value for custo­mers by deve­lo­ping new equip­ment, proces­ses and tech­no­lo­gies that will help opera­ti­ons reach the next level for the work­place of the future and create a more sustainable envi­ron­ment for the next generation.

About Komatsu
Komatsu deve­lops and supplies tech­no­lo­gies, equip­ment and services for the construc­tion, mining, forklift, indus­trial and fores­try markets. For a century, the company has crea­ted value for its custo­mers through manu­fac­tu­ring and tech­no­logy inno­va­tion, and colla­bo­ra­ted with others to enable a sustainable future where people, busi­nes­ses and the planet thrive together.

 

News

Munich, Germany — French private equity firm PAI Part­ners (“PAI”) has acqui­red Savory Solu­ti­ons Group, a leading inter­na­tio­nal provi­der of flavor and func­tio­nal solu­ti­ons for the food sector. The seller was Inter­na­tio­nal Flavors & Fragran­ces Inc. (“IFF”). The merger is still subject to the usual regu­la­tory appro­vals. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted by the second quar­ter of 2023. POELLATH provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the manage­ment of Savory Solu­ti­ons Group in connec­tion with the sale.

Savory Solu­ti­ons Group, parti­cu­larly under the Wiberg and Piasa brands, offers a range of value-added savory ingre­dients and blends. The solu­ti­ons are used by food manu­fac­tu­rers, butchers as well as food­ser­vice opera­tors to improve texture and taste and extend the shelf life of their products. The company opera­tes 17 produc­tion sites and nine inno­va­tion sites and employs over 1,800 people. Savory Solu­ti­ons Group serves more than 11,000 custo­mers in Europe, North America and Asia. The Group gene­ra­tes sales of around 470 million euros.

Toge­ther with PAI, Savory Solu­ti­ons Group will conti­nue to acce­le­rate the busi­ness through inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion in Europe and North America, both orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons, parti­cu­larly in the attrac­tive vege­ta­ble and clean label segments. — The acqui­si­tion is subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appro­vals and is expec­ted to close by the second quar­ter of 2023.

French private equity firm PAI Part­ners invests in market-leading compa­nies around the world with a strong focus on the food and consu­mer goods industries.

Advi­sor Savory Solu­ti­ons Group: POELLATH, Munich

Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus (Part­ner, Manage­ment Investments)
Jan Lukas Jung­c­laus, LL.M. (Stel­len­bosch) (Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Participations)
Ida Süß, LL.M. (UCLA) (Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Associates)

About PAI Partners

PAI Part­ners is a leading private equity firm inves­ting in market-leading compa­nies world­wide. PAI Part­ners mana­ges €26.4 billion of buyout funds and has comple­ted 92 invest­ments in 11 coun­tries since 1994 with a tran­sac­tion value of over €72 billion. PAI has built an outstan­ding track record of working with ambi­tious manage­ment teams where unique perspec­tive, unmat­ched indus­try expe­ri­ence and long-term vision enable compa­nies to reach — and go beyond — their full poten­tial. www.paipartners.com.

News

Munich — FCF Fox Corpo­rate Finance GmbH (FCF) publis­hes the latest “Indus­trial IoT Venture Capi­tal Report”. This first-ever report, which exami­nes Euro­pean venture capi­tal funding trends in deep-tech verti­cal indus­trial IoT, reve­als a bifur­ca­ted trend.

Indus­trial IoT, the sub-verti­cal of IoT that focu­ses on indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons of IoT, is domi­na­ted by large indus­trial groups but also by a large number of start-ups that offer inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons in areas such as hard­ware and senso­ric, soft­ware & analy­tics and connec­ti­vity. In its latest report, FCF has high­ligh­ted VC invest­ments but also exit acti­vi­ties (trade sale and IPO) of star­tups from the verti­cal, focus on Euro­pean star­tups in the obser­va­tion period 2017 — Q3 2022.

A look at the deve­lo­p­ment of invest­ment volu­mes and the number of deals reve­als a split picture: Although finan­cing volu­mes have incre­a­sed signi­fi­cantly from EUR 650 million in 2017 to EUR 914 million in 2022. The number of deals, howe­ver, has been steadily decli­ning since 2019, from 407 to 163 deals in 2022. The decline in the number of deals thus began even before the gene­ral cooling of the venture capi­tal market since around the begin­ning of 2022. Nevertheless, the rising volu­mes indi­cate that the sector is still attrac­tive for inves­tors and is thus success­fully holding its own against slumps in other verticals.

Matu­rity of the sector incre­a­ses — Out of the garage, into the factory

More volume with fewer deals natu­rally means higher average and median volu­mes per deal. In 2022 in parti­cu­lar, the invest­ment volume was largely driven by three mega deals — KINEXON with EUR 119 million, Descar­tes with EUR 107 million, and Nexxiot with a volume of EUR 102 million. In turn, the gene­rally decli­ning shares of seed & early-stage deals over time indi­cate a steadily growing matu­rity of the vertical.

News

Landshut/Munich — Bayern Kapi­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active growth inves­tors in the German high-tech land­s­cape, is once again inves­ting in iThera Medi­cal with funds from the Bava­rian Growth Fund. The Munich-based MedTech start-up is active in the field of optoacoustic imaging for medi­cal diagnostics and has deve­lo­ped the laser light-based “MSOT” tech­no­logy (Multis­pec­tral Optoacoustic Tomo­gra­phy) for the detec­tion of various dise­ase patterns such as cancer or fibro­sis. Other inves­tors in the Series D round with a total volume of EUR 13 million are TRUMPF Venture as lead inves­tor, the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Coun­cil Fund of the Euro­pean Commis­sion and the exis­ting inves­tors Mey Capi­tal Matrix, BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH, Fluxu­nit, Falk Stra­scheg Holding and Occi­dent Group.

In clini­cal prac­tice, a wide range of diagnostic proce­du­res is essen­tial to diagnose dise­ase and moni­tor response to treat­ment. In many areas, howe­ver, there is an unmet need for accu­rate, objec­tive, and quan­ti­ta­tive methods.

The unique multis­pec­tral optoacoustic tomo­gra­phy (MSOT) from iThera Medi­cal GmbH promi­ses a breakthrough here. The MedTech company was spun off from Helm­holtz Zentrum München in 2010 with the aim of commer­cia­li­zing rese­arch results in the field of inno­va­tive medi­cal imaging methods and today employs 45 people. iThera’s MSOT tech­no­logy uses the photoacoustic effect — the conver­sion of light energy into sound waves — to charac­te­rize and diffe­ren­tiate diffe­rent tissue types in the body and convert them into 3D images. In contrast to estab­lis­hed imaging methods, anato­mi­cal, func­tio­nal and mole­cu­lar tissue infor­ma­tion can thus be displayed for the first time at a depth of several centi­me­ters in high reso­lu­tion. This enab­les physi­ci­ans to make diagno­ses early, non-inva­si­vely and in real time — for example in the case of vascu­lar, fibro­tic or tumor dise­a­ses. MSOT has already demons­tra­ted its poten­tial clini­cal value in a variety of studies and is curr­ently being used in clini­cal rese­arch at leading acade­mic hospi­tals worldwide.

The company will use the new funding to advance the tran­si­tion of MSOT from rese­arch to routine clini­cal use. To this end, iThera Medi­cal is deve­lo­ping an MSOT device opti­mi­zed for routine clini­cal use in order to obtain regu­la­tory appro­val for use in Europe and the United States (CE and FDA appro­val) and to expand the clini­cal evidence from previous studies.

“The funding round is the next important step in taking our MSOT tech­no­logy from a rese­arch tool to a diagnostic tool in the clini­cal setting, which we believe will be a game-chan­ger for milli­ons of pati­ents around the world,” said Chris­tian Wiest, CEO and co-foun­der of iThera Medi­cal. “The support of our inves­tors — both new and exis­ting — will enable us to realize this vision.”

Ulrich Kruse, Invest­ment Mana­ger at TRUMPF Venture (photo), commen­ted, “iThera Medical’s tech­no­logy is capa­ble of deli­vering the next breakthrough in medi­cal imaging. As a company with roots in photo­nics and medi­cal tech­no­logy, we are plea­sed to support MSOT’s conti­nued deve­lo­p­ment and anti­ci­pate a success­ful launch in medi­cal imaging.”

“MSOT addres­ses several criti­cal limi­ta­ti­ons of today’s non-inva­sive in vivo imaging tech­no­lo­gies, combi­ning the ease of use and depth pene­tra­tion of conven­tio­nal hand­held ultra­sound systems with unpre­ce­den­ted high-reso­lu­tion opti­cal infor­ma­tion down to the mole­cu­lar level,” explai­ned Dr. Georg Ried, mana­ging direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “This will mini­mize risks for pati­ents and reduce finan­cial burdens in several areas of health­care systems world­wide. We are there­fore very plea­sed to conti­nue on the path we have embar­ked on toge­ther in the future.”

About iThera Medial:
Foun­ded in 2010, iThera Medi­cal deve­lops and markets optoacoustic imaging systems for precli­ni­cal and clini­cal rese­arch. More recently, the company has begun using its tech­no­logy for routine clini­cal diagnostics in a variety of dise­ase settings, inclu­ding cancer, inflamma­tion, fibro­sis and cardio­vascu­lar dise­ase. Optoacoustic imaging uses the photoacoustic effect — the conver­sion of light energy into acoustic signals — to visua­lize and quan­tify opti­cal contrast in deep tissue with high spatial and tempo­ral resolution.
www.ithera-medical.com

About Bayern Kapital:
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).

Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state government, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 companies.

Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in early on include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plastics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scomp­ler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Theva, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion and many more.
www.bayernkapital.de

News

Munich — fruit­core robo­tics has raised €23 million in new capi­tal in a Series B finan­cing round. For the first time, inter­na­tio­nally renow­ned venture capi­tal firms Capri­corn Part­ners and KOMPAS, as well as high- and deep-tech invest­ment firm XAI tech­no­lo­gies, are inves­ting in the pioneer of intel­li­gent robo­tics and auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons for busi­nes­ses of all sizes. Rene­wed confi­dence is also expres­sed by the previous VCs: UVC Part­ners, Matter­wave Ventures, CNB Capi­tal, the family office Pecon and the btov private inves­tor network are also parti­ci­pa­ting in the finan­cing round. The capi­tal will be used to acce­le­rate product inno­va­tion, sales and marke­ting, and inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

“With the closing of our Series B finan­cing, we are once again a big step closer to our goal of making robo­tics and auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons acces­si­ble to a broad mass. We see that the demand for high-quality and easy-to-use robots in the market is conti­nuously incre­a­sing. There­fore, we will use the new capi­tal prima­rily to serve the demand for our robo­tics and auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons as well as digi­tal products in the Euro­pean market”, says Jens Rieg­ger CEO and co-foun­der of fruit­core robo­tics. The company is curr­ently active in Germany, Austria, Switz­er­land and Italy. By the end of 2023, fruit­core robo­tics aims to open up a large part of the Euro­pean markets.

Central to fruit­core robo­tics’ success are the intel­li­gent robo­tics solu­ti­ons based around the “Digi­tal Robot” HORST, which provide compa­nies of all sizes with access to indus­trial, highly produc­tive auto­ma­tion and digi­ta­liz­a­tion. Even small and medium-sized compa­nies without much expe­ri­ence can get star­ted easily and quickly. The entry barri­ers are low — low invest­ment costs, fast imple­men­ta­tion, intui­tive programming and high perfor­mance meet the demand. Hard­ware, soft­ware, connec­ti­vity and services are offe­red in an easy-to-use end-to-end solution.

Three years after its market launch, fruit­core robo­tics is already auto­ma­ting several hund­red diffe­rent appli­ca­ti­ons in 29 indus­tries. The network of part­ner compa­nies in the DACH region and in Italy has grown to more than 60 parti­ci­pants and is being succes­si­vely expan­ded. Today, the company employs more than 100 people and will conti­nue to create attrac­tive jobs at its sites in Constance and Villin­gen through further growth.

Benja­min Erhart, Gene­ral Part­ner at UVC Part­ners (Photo) and Lead Inves­tor at fruit­core robo­tics says: “fruit­core robo­tics addres­ses a major pain of our economy: scala­ble auto­ma­tion in manu­fac­tu­ring SMEs. It is a key to address the criti­cal situa­tion of deli­very times, growing demand and (again) incre­a­singly Europe-centric produc­tion in a timely manner. Since our initial invest­ment in 2021, the fruit­core robo­tics team has shown that deep soft­ware exper­tise has crea­ted an offe­ring that perfectly meets the needs of their custo­mers on a mass scale.”

About fruit­core robotics

fruit­core robo­tics GmbH, based in Constance, Germany, specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment, produc­tion and marke­ting of tech­ni­cally outstan­ding and easy-to-use “digi­tal robots”. The deep-tech company’s focus is on making robo­tic indus­trial auto­ma­tion avail­able to the masses. The modu­lar product port­fo­lio inclu­des the “Digi­tal Robots” HORST, the intui­tive soft­ware horstFX, the Indus­trial IoT plat­form horstCOSMOS.com and intel­li­gent features for camera reco­gni­tion. The robots are Made in Germany, from the hard­ware to the soft­ware. In addi­tion to robots, the company also offers ready-made solu­ti­ons and soft­ware packa­ges for plug & play imple­men­ta­tion of complete applications.

About UVC Partners
UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin-based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­ting in Euro­pean B2B start-ups in the fields of enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity. The fund gene­rally invests between €0.5 and €10 million at the outset and up to €30 million in total per company. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team as well as from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading inno­va­tion and start-up center. With over 350 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This colla­bo­ra­tion gives UVC Part­ners the oppor­tu­nity to provide star­tups with unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial partners.

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